Replays clearly showed the Spaniard had flung himself to the ground after little or no contact with West Brom defender Steven Reid.

Wenger said Cazorla, who faced chants of 'cheat’ from visiting fans, had insisted he had been touched, but the Arsenal manager promised to review replays of the incident and could take disciplinary action against his player.

“I am sorry if it was not a penalty,” Wenger said. “But I have spoke to Santi, and he said he has been touched and lost his balance.

"Maybe he made a bit more of it. I don’t know. It’s a difficult decision. It can go for you, it can go against you. It went for us today.”

Wenger will study the incident and, if Cazorla is found to have dived, or to have been less than truthful about being touched by Reid, he can expect severe disciplinary action.

“Of course,” Wenger said. “I don’t want to see that [diving]. But he told me that he has been touched. I will look at it, don’t worry.”

Wenger admitted his side had got “lucky” with the penalty, but West Brom manager Steve Clarke could find himself in trouble with the Football Association after describing Jones as “one of the poorest” referees in the Premier League.

Besides the first penalty, Clarke accused Jones of failing to spot a possible foul by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in the build-up to a second, and missing a handball by Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker that would have led to a penalty of their own.

“In this country we’ve got some fantastic referees,” he said. “Today we got one of the poorest of a really good group. Since I took this job I said I won’t speak about referees. We’ve had good decisions and bad decisions all season that I haven’t spoken about. But the decisions today were key in the game.”

But Clarke largely absolved Cazorla saying: “The culture in the game now is that if there is contact, players will go down. In that one, there was no contact. Cazorla might have thought there was contact coming, but Steven pulled out of the challenge. There was no challenge.”